What I learned by going through my spam folder

Guys, I’m quitting! I don’t have to work anymore because I am one of 10 lucky people, who Bill and Melinda Gates want to donate $5 000 000 000 dollars to. Yes, that’s right. Now that Bill has almost achieved his goal of world domination by inserting some sort of chip into all of us through a vaccine*, he has decided to donate about half his net worth to 10 random strangers around the world (see explanation for asterisk at the end of the post). 

How do I know this? Well, because he personally contacted me from his Brazilian email address.

And because he says that what he’s writing is 100% legitimate with a link to the wikipedia page of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as proof!

I’m actually very glad it said right at the beginning of the email that all information is 100% legit, because it did seem a little bit strange that Bill would personally contact me to give me just a bit less than the GDP of Liechtenstein. But that little statement erased all my doubts. 

To be completely honest with you, this email made my day. Because up to this point, all of my spam emails had been pretty boring. I’m talking about your standard “Your Paypal whatnot has expired, please give us your bank details”. But this one is a proper Nigerian prince type email. Except my Nigerian prince is Bill Gates.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time, but I don’t want to go through the entire thing here. So, subscribe to my newsletter to receive a full copy of it!

As funny as it was, this spam email is an absurd example of an important lesson: If you want people to trust you, being authentic is important.

In an increasingly remote society, having an authentic and genuine online appearance is fast becoming a necessity for a successful business. Because after all people only want to do business with people or organisations they trust - whether they’re buying a service, a piece of software or a product (or 5 billion dollars from Bill Gates). 

Simply put, the copy and content of a good website should not only say what you want, but also do so in a manner that is authentic to you. People will spot it if you don’t!

And to whoever wrote this gem of a spam email, here’s a pro tip: check your grammar ;)

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*In these weird times you can’t really count on common sense anymore. So I just thought I’d state that: I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS!